The FIFA football series from Electronic Arts (now EA Sports FC) is famous for its funny and sometimes creepy bugs, but the newest mishap raised eyebrows and became a hot subject of discussion on social media platforms and various gaming forums. Alright, it’s the so-called Calf Dribble that lies in the heart of this story, and we are going to dig into the glitch today. What’s more, we will also consider the steps EA claims to take to address the issue, so let’s go into the matter!
Calf Dribble Bug
The Calf Dribble bug allows you to stick the ball right to the calf of a player, making it impossible for the opponents to take it away. Of course, users found the application for this trick immediately when it was revealed. Indeed, such an obvious solution was not long in coming as this is a sure way to score an easy goal – one deft move and the job is done; just sprint to the net and bury the ball! Although the maneuver itself looked pretty hilarious from the very beginning, it turned into a real spectacle as soon as inventive users discovered a way to stick the ball to the hands of a footballer, defying any laws of physics. By the way, there is a limited number of sportsmen able to perform the trick – only those with the Trickster+ PlayStyle (Ronaldinho, Di Maria, Garrincha, Neymar Jr, Laudrup, and a few others).
Despite all the ridiculousness of the glitch, it cannot be called harmless, and many players have already suffered from it in the recent UT Champions. It’s hard to even imagine what impact the bug could have not just on the game itself but also on FIFA betting – users could earn huge money by placing stakes on a team that has in its roster at least one player with Trickster+ attributes. No doubt, the issue needed to be resolved as soon as possible.
EA’s Reaction
EA acknowledged the problem rather quickly and made an official note on the Trello board, informing users about their decision to temporarily exclude the Trickster+ PlayStyle from the player items. Instead, the company has replaced it with the basic Trickster until the bug is fixed. Although the glitch is so far mitigated, it still seems to lurk somewhere in the game’s code, but players no longer can take advantage of it. Meanwhile, EA did not provide any information on possible compensations to users affected by the Calf Dribble bug, so the community is left frustrated.
EA’s rapid response and concern about the issue testify to their genuine desire to fix things and provide players with a fair gaming experience. The bug is promised to be eliminated in the forthcoming update, but its release date is not yet known. The latest, 3rd patch was issued on October 12 and was focused on fixing more than a hundred bugs relating to various aspects of the game, including Ultimate Team, core gameplay, clubs, VOLTA, career mode, as well as audio and visual effects.
The situation makes it obvious that in this fast-paced digital world, the nature of software development is still intricate, and even the most well-known titles are not immune from occasional issues. Hopefully, EA’s devs work hard to address the Calf Dribble glitch and make the functionality run smoothly. Otherwise, the game’s popularity will decrease dramatically, which is pretty disappointing considering the fact that the title brought EA Sports an incredible success – FC 24 became the best-selling game in Europe and attracted approximately 11.3 million players in the first month of release.
